The David McWilliams Podcast

Between 250,000-300,000 tourists land on the island every year, 2,500 a day in summer, and yet it still feels authentic, alive, and deeply Irish. In this episode, we ask: how do remote places like Inishmore thrive in today’s economy, while once-wealthy regions like France’s Île de Ré struggle with emptying out? We dig into the wild history of cod and salt (the currency of empires), why Ireland salted beef instead of fish, and how the Aran Islands are now punching above their weight in the global experience economy. From lobster-pot pubs to the death of distance, we explore what makes people pay not just for goods and services, but for memory, tribe, and authenticity.

What if the solution to Ireland’s housing crisis has been sitting on our doorstep all along? We dive into the Danish model of cooperative housing, where 7% of Danes live in co-ops, and a full third of Copenhageners do too, and explore how the GAA, with its 2,200 clubs and pristine community pitches in every village, could spearhead something similar here. Forget developer margins and speculative bubbles: in Denmark, a co-op share might cost €70–100k, with monthly housing costs around €800, compared to a private flat at €400k and €1,200 rent. We talk about the power of collective ownership, intergenerational communities, and why housing is really about dignity, not speculation. Along the way, we get into Jim Gavin’s presidential bid, Fianna Fáil’s GAA connection, and why our presidency has become more like Ireland’s Got Talent than a serious constitutional role. 

AI investment is exploding: the “Magnificent Seven” of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and NVIDIA, are ploughing almost 7% of US GDP into AI and data centres. That’s the same scale as the US housing boom in 2006, and greater than the dot-com bubble at its peak. Today, just seven firms make up 34% of the S&P 500, the highest concentration in history. Earnings per share in these companies grew 37% last year, compared to just 6% in the rest of the index. But history warns us, RCA in the 1920s, dot-coms in the 1990s, that transformative technologies can change the world while destroying fortunes. The question now: is AI the next revolution, or the next bubble waiting to burst?

Broadcast from Île de Ré, we dive into France’s mounting fiscal mess and political paralysis. With Macron a lame-duck, bond markets charging Paris more than Athens, and a nationwide strike looming, we ask: could Europe’s cornerstone become its weakest link? We unpack France’s towering state-and-semi-state debts, why Japan can print and Paris can’t, the ECB’s “will they/won’t they” backstop if Le Pen takes power, and how a sovereignist turn could trigger a rewrite of France’s constitution, goodbye Fifth Republic, hello Sixth. Along the way: Anglo-Saxon doom-mongering, De Gaulle’s Jupiterian legacy, contagion math, and why life in “paradise” can still feel like purgatory. Big stakes, bigger history, and a very French cliff-hanger.

We took economics to a music festival, and somehow packed the tent. In this Electric Picnic highlights episode from Mindfield, we rock up bleary-eyed and buzzing, then dive straight into the big stuff: what Trump’s assault on America’s institutions means for money, markets, and the rest of us. We map the new super-cycle from post-war social democracy to Reagan-Thatcher finance, to today’s populist reboot, and why we think the US is flirting with a fiscal, monetary, and dollar crunch. Closer to home, we ask why Ireland looks rich on paper but feels poor in reality. In between, we tell the story of the 1992 currency crisis, a lo-fi mission to the Dorchester, and accidentally swapping the Central Bank for UBS and because we were literally in a field surrounded by stages, we tackle the music economy: streaming’s winner-takes-all logic, Daniel Ek’s “music costs almost zero,” algorithms that feed nostalgia over novelty, and why culture only renews when the young can afford to create. 

Is the US drifting into Peronism? We trace the playbook, tariffs and import substitution, national champions, censorship-by-intimidation, and a war on independent institutions, and map it onto Trump’s America: sacking a Fed governor, menacing J-Powell, firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, deploying the National Guard, and the Treasury taking a slice of Intel. Along the way, we tell the family story that makes the point better than any chart: two Italian brothers leave Lombardy in 1950, one goes to Argentina (then the world’s 7th-richest country), the other to the US. Eighty years later, identical genes, opposite outcomes. Why? Institutions. We uncover why “markets” aren’t a moral compass; why an emerging-market test now applies to America; what Turkey teaches about politicos capturing central banks; and how a weaker, politicised dollar would rattle Bretton Woods, push allies away, and turn a stock market priced for perfection into kindling. It’s part musical, part macro: from Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina to Don’t Cry for Me, Oklahoma. We’ll explain how it starts, how it ends, and what the rest of us in Europe should do while the richest third-world country in history experiments on the global monetary system.

Ten years ago, Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to more than 1.1 million asylum seekers in a single year with the words “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”). Today, Germany has over 3.4 million asylum seekers, about 4% of its population, and politics, society, and culture have been transformed. In this episode, we dive into what really happened over the last decade. We talk with historian Katja Hoyer about the numbers, the culture clashes, the rise of the AfD from a fringe party to polling at 25%, and the everyday realities in towns where the refugee population doubled overnight. From schools where 80–90% of kids now have migrant backgrounds, to half of Germany’s welfare claimants being non-Germans, the story is as much about economics and integration as it is about politics. We pull it apart: the hopes, the backlash, and the future of immigration policy.

The state has quietly become the biggest buyer of new homes. In fact, builders like Cairn Homes now have forward sales of nearly €946 million, much of it locked in by government deals. That means up to 80–85% of new builds are being bought by the state, at an average price of €382,000 per unit, while wages lag far behind rising house prices, which jumped 7.8% last year. So who’s being pushed out? First-time buyers. Instead of solving the housing crisis, the state is inflating prices, nationalising the property market by stealth, and creating what could be the most expensive council houses in the world. In this episode, we join the dots between Dutch disease, tax windfalls, political PR, and the future of Irish society. Why are nurses, teachers and young couples emigrating when billions are gushing into Ireland? And how did estate agents, once kings of the market, become an endangered species? We break it all down, numbers, history, and politics, to show why the government itself is now the main culprit behind Ireland’s housing mess.

After nearly 11 years of war, Putin’s maximalist demands have shrunk to a sliver of land in Donetsk, a pyrrhic victory after countless lives lost and millions displaced. But while the Kremlin clings to a symbolic scrap of territory, we explore whether Ukraine’s true future lies not in NATO membership but in becoming what political economist Harold Laswell once called a “garrison state.” What does that mean? Think of countries like Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, or even Finland in 1940: highly militarised, heavily armed by allies, but able to survive and rebuild under constant threat. Could this be Ukraine’s path, a nation of 40 million people with a vast agricultural base and heavy industry, rebuilt under an American security umbrella and billions in European aid? We pull apart the history: from the Treaty of Moscow (1940) that fixed Finland’s borders for decades, to Eisenhower’s warning of the military–industrial complex, to the Peloponnesian War’s clash of Sparta and Athens. Can democracy thrive in a garrison state? Is Europe ready to bankroll Ukraine’s reconstruction? And will turning Ukraine into a military bulwark finally secure peace, or only prepare the ground for the next war?